What is the first-line treatment for melanoma?
Dr. Ellen Marmur Answered: The first-line treatment (the best plan of attack) for most skin cancers, especially melanoma, is surgery. Sometimes surgeons can do only a partial excision if the tumor is too large or affects an essential body part such as the spine, heart, or brain. Surgery for melanoma is much more invasive and extensive than excision of other skin cancers because the cancer grows vertically – deep down into the skin. Melanoma is like mold inside your walls; it seeps down deeply and can destroy anything in its path. For this reason, surgeons sometimes have to go past the fat layer of skin to the muscle in order to take out a tumor. It’s also necessary to take wide margins to make sure the cancer hasn’t leeched into healthy tissue nearby. Usually surgery for melanoma is an outpatient procedure, unless the area of skin to be excised is very large. When a surgeon excises melanoma that is deeper than one millimeter, he or she always discusses the option to check to see if the
